In barber shops, hair salons, caregiving homes, hospitals, and other facilities, heretofore, an employee often washes the hair of a person whose hair is to be washed, such as a customer or a person who needs care. In such a case, the employee rests the head of a person whose hair is to be washed, on a washbasin with his/her face up or down, wets the hair with a shower running, and puts a detergent such as a shampoo on the hair, thereby washing the hair. The hair washing produces an effect of massaging a scalp since the scalp is scrubbed by human fingers in addition to hair. Therefore, the hair washing makes a person whose hair is to be washed feel comfortable.
The hair washing involves many processes such as wetting hair, washing the hair with a shampoo, rinsing the shampoo from the hair, and drying the hair, and therefore requires times and efforts to some extent. In addition, the employee washes the hair of a person whose hair is to be washed so as not to make him/her feel uncomfortable, and such a situation becomes a large burden on the employee. For this reason, devices to achieve an automatic hair washing operation have been required in not only caregiving homes and hospitals, but also barber shops and hair salons.
For example, Patent Documents 1 and 2 each disclose a device configured to spray cold or hot water and a detergent onto a scalp and hair through nozzles, thereby washing the hair. Such a device enables a certain degree of hair washing operation by moving the nozzles for spraying water and adjusting a pressure and amount of water to be sprayed.
However, this device merely sprays liquids onto a human head, and therefore the hair washing operation by this device is significantly difficult from hair washing by human hand in terms of a sensation on, for example, a scalp. Consequently, a person whose hair is to be washed does not feel comfortable unlike the hair washing by human hand. In other words, the hair washing operation by this device occasionally makes the person feel unpleasant.
It is considered that appropriate stimulation of a scalp by physical contact like contact of human fingers with a scalp becomes necessitated in order to approach hair washing by human hand.
Patent Documents 3 to 6 each disclose a device configured to stimulate a scalp by physical contact with the scalp.
Specifically, Patent Documents 3 to 5 each disclose a device including a protruding member to come into contact with a scalp and to scrub the scalp.
Patent Document 6 discloses a device including a rod-shaped member, like a human finger, to be pressed against a scalp by a spring. According to this device, the rod-shaped member has a leading end configured to come into contact with the scalp and to scrub the scalp.